“Wealthier smartphone users are less likely to play games or tweet and will opt for news, travel or finance apps, according to a new study,” Natasha Baker reports for Reuters.

“The research by The Luxury Institute focused on app usage among wealthy consumers, who earn an annual income of $150,000 or more. They tend to be older, with a mean age of 52,” Baker reports. “‘As you get older and have family and significant others, aging parents, and a lot more assets and investments, you’re going to need apps for far more relevant things than playing games and chatting with your peers,’ said Milton Pedraza, CEO of The Luxury Institute… The marketing firm Plastic Mobile polled 603 consumers whose mean income was $295,000 and net worth was $2.8 million for The Luxury Institute study.”

Baker reports, “While wealthy consumers are only slightly more likely to have a smartphone than the general population, Nielsen said the breakdown of devices owned differs considerably. Forty-five percent of wealthy smartphone users own an iPhone, followed 35 percent with an Android device and a quarter who had a Blackberry… Overall Android had 46 percent of market share, followed by the iPhone with 30 percent and Blackberry with 15 percent… Jonathan Carson, the CEO of digital at Nielsen added that the iPhone has always done quite well with high-income consumers.”

MacDailyNews Take: Unsurprising. We’ve long known that users of the world’s best personal computers are smarter and richer than Windows PC sufferers, it follows that users of the world’s best smartphone would be, too. (See related articles below.)

The busy and wealthy don’t have time to fight their way through an interface to get something done – they want access to their information in a way that is as transparent as possible. This is why, more and more, the busy and wealthy use Macs and iPhones.